i've started keeping a small stack of flashcards with words like "premise" and "conclusion", "ought imperative" and "rhetorical" on them, each with definitions and their convoluted, sketchy examples, the understanding of which slips just out of your mind's reach if you leave them alone for a moment too long. Crit. Thinking is still as hard as it promised to be in the first few lectures - i refuse to lose grasp of the alien words and techniques that form the base of Philo, so i pull them out when i'm walking to morning lectures, or doing the laundry, or lounging on next-door Alex's front porch; roll the terms and their mechanics over my mind and my tongue so they will come naturally, with practiced ease. i want them to be on a convenient front shelf of my mind, ready to grab and throw in the mix.

should one have to work to feel happy. is happiness a state of mind, an imperative of life, an impetus of the heart - a work in progress? or, perhaps, an effort? the thought of discovering that happiness is constituted (partially, or otherwise) by effort - that terrifies me. but let's not idealise, romanticise. let's leave that to those who can afford the luxury.

and is happiness exclusive, containable? must it be all-encompassing, or can it apply itself where it chooses?

this seems rather out-of-body to write about. i don't quite have the energy to compartmentalize, though. so Skylar found me downstairs at 5 in the morning sitting amidst a pile of empty fortune cookie wrappers and looking rather ugly. eyeliner seldom looks glamorous when it's running halfway down your face, no matter what magazines may try to convince you about the "smoky effect". i don't have a very clear concept of time but it would be more or less accurate to say she took til 6 or so to sort me out to a state of her satisfaction. she seemed oddly concerned about the bit about the large number of fortune cookies. it didn't seem much of an issue to me. i had not felt hungry during the day so i didn't eat. there is a big bucket collected downstairs at the house from when Winny Matt Tiff & the whole jingang/Alina and her friends/Gabby's boyfriend plus frat brothers order in from LuLu's Noodles. and it just happened that this morning i wanted to know my fortune. the first fortune didn't satisfy me, so i opened another. and another. and another. it also happened that the gastric pangs had settled in so it seemed like the logical thing to do, to eat.

it's not that hard a thing to make sense of, i don't understand why everyone in this house is making such a big deal out of it. if i were them, i'd worry more about Alina tossing around in her loft with swollen lymph nodes.

'I'd say that love slices lengthways.'

She was silent. We were both exposed. The truth is that you can divide your heart in all sorts of interesting ways - a little here, a little there, most banked at home, some of it coined out for a flutter. But love cleaves through the mind's mathematics. Love's lengthways splits the heart in two - the heart where you are, the heart where you want to be. How will you heal your heart when love has split it in two?

She said, 'I don't know. I don't know how this will end.'

- Winterson

the worst ache is the ache that calls from a place embedded, impossible to reach. of words stuck in the passageway between the heart to the head to the mouth.

i think i have mono. it hit Alina first, she's been out of her voice classes for days, and the whole house is slowly giving in to it.

revelling in my first piece of homework. one-page response to frankly an amazingly insightful and impassioned piece by Chon Noriega on the issue of "Race Matters, Media Matters". that's what gets me so psyched about my lessons, they allow access to such a smorgasbord of diverse reading materials and texts that jolt you into such a spectrum of opinions you never knew you had. so anyway, i googled the guy. Noriega championed several independent visual media causes, giving the minority a real Voice. there's just too few people in the contemporary world that actually do that anymore, that actually stick their necks out. am struggling now to keep my "controlled response", uh, under control. meaning under the word limit. I Despise Summarizing.

anyhow, earlier today i was sitting at the Frat Quad tables, practically breaking out in a cold sweat trying to wriggle my last module into my schedule (it's kind-of-sort-of considered course overloading, but i kind-of-sort-of NEVER EVER will pass up the chance to take Intro To Anthropology). i must have looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown cause this korean frat guy in a frat sweatshirt smoking at the Quad and looking like he didn't have anything to do in the world but sit there and concentrate on looking cool (smug asswipe) came over and kindly enlightened me with the gift of Scheduleman. Scheduleman = genius invention by random genius Carnegie Mellon computer science student from generations past (love you, whoever you are) which basically plots out course timings for you at a click, lets you switch around til you find a good combination. Schedule-Frickin'-Amazin'-Man, if you ask me. so after twenty mins of (fucking) happy clicking, i had my schedule, complete with my beloved Intro to Anthro. and here it is, just so you can witness the beauty of it for yourself.

had another first class today, Philosophy: Critical Thinking Module. i'm starting to seriously consider majoring in Philosophy, after browsing the course catalogue i'm pretty darn impressed with the Philo. department's offerings and the syllabi for the next few semesters. haven't shelved Anthropology, Professional Writing and Psych yet though, so keep your fingers crossed for me that the rest of Mission: Find What I Love keeps working out. but judging from the Crit. class i had this morning, Philo would be the mentally most challenging i.e. most rewarding major for me. it's such a complex merging of the abstract and (surprisingly) the practical/applicative, that i find myself stretching more than i probably ever have. this is good, yes? yes.

i'm popping downstairs to mix up a batch of iced tea with Skylar. yes you heard me right, mix. turns out both Skylar and I have a thing for Turner's Premium Iced Tea (redefines the term shiok) and it also turns out the only complaint we both have is that it's just a tad bit too thick so both of us keep adding portions of water to it. so we decided to work out a special Roselawn system of stocking up on it: mix, lor. we're going to regularly mix up batches and store them in huge vats in our blessedly huge fridge. voila, Turner's Tea a la Roselawn Terrace. also, we've worked out a system of Oreo snacking too. each informs the other when the midnight cravings hit, so that she can eat the half with icing and i, the half without.

so, jess was complaining earlier online how dreary life is becoming. i can't remember the last time i could empathise when people say life has turned grey. life for me has been in constant painful color shifts - spanning the spectrum from the comfortable primary color solids to the fairytale pastels to the mind boggling neons to the blinding, piercing palette of an over-exposed, over-saturated, too-sharp photograph. and then there are days when everything is red; everything is decadent purple; everything is yellow. it was all yellow.

so things are..well, to quote dave, "like that, lor." i'm still over here, everyone's still over there, she's still over there. i can still find pockets of time where i feel lighthearted, though. "el bizarro", as Dave The Strange would say. (make mental note to compile book of Dave's Quotable Quotes)
but it really is bizarre, i suppose. or, to quote alanis (much more quotable than david), "isn't it ironic?"
most bizarre is that sometimes, just one phrase can redeem a book, one frame can redeem a film, one moment can redeem a day - and one gesture can redeem a person.

i had nearly forgotten just that precise sensation i get when you turn with that quizzical gaze and offer your hand.
i know it's like a boomerang though, it'll come back to me on a particular day in december. i predict it'll feel like finding my way home, after a long bout of amnesia.

so i'm back, the original idea was to gush about my first lesson(s) but i'm not quite in the mood for recaps right now. it suffices to say that they blew me away - i officially like learning, again.

not feeling very coherent at this moment. feel as if barely know how to string a sentence together. ironic, considering how earlier today i could barely shut up about how amazing/awesome/kickass (i went on in this vein for quite awhile, pity those in my company) my classes were. apparently my brain hasn't quite settled yet into the habit of, uh, thinking.

anyhow, i OD-ed on guacamole today. Winny and i had been craving Chipotle (mexican food so orgasmic it should be illegal) for the past few days, so today we hopped on a bus downtown to execute Operation Eat Guacamole. turns out we probably shouldn't have been quite so, er, eager. i wasn't paying attention to it at the time, but on hindsight, i suspect we were eating with enthusiasm that would scare little children. oh well, what to do, when the guacamole calls, you answer.

the weather here isn't that great, all in all. global warming and those typhoons are screwing everything up, innit? and yours truly here brought piles of jeans/sneakers (note: NOT waterproof)/scarves etc because i had this idea that i'd be kickin' around in the autumn leaves/powder snow a la Temperate Weather Asian Barbie. not happening, i guess. to quote the great Homer Simpson, "Doh!"

several campus-drifting hours and course material reading at campus coffee joints (ooh, check out the alliteration) inspired a Winterson revival - some rare lucky stroke of genius compelled me to throw one of my favourites of hers in my suitcase. i never get tired of The Powerbook, the words get more beautiful with every read.


Love has got complicated, tied up with promises, bruised with plans, dogged with an ending that nobody wants - when all love is, is what it always is - that you look at me and want me and I don't turn away.

fucking gorgeous. she's probably one of the few writers that could make 'gorgeous' a suitable adjective for text, words.

talk about contrasts, we're in the living room and Alina's aggravating me by reading out possibly the ugliest words in existence - excerpts from The Mantra of Glorified Bullshit, more formally known as Bush's Inaugural Speech. apparently it's one of her course readings. thank god i don't have to sift through that landfill. meanwhile, Skylar wants to illegally 'adopt' a cat. meaning she's going to go out to a pet shop, buy a kitten, let it roam around our house/surrounding houses, thereby breaking every campus housing rule regarding pets, and then coach us to blatantly lie in our RA (Resident Advisor aka Senior Who Keeps An Eye On Us Kids) Scott's face if he asks us about it. poor Scott, with little freshman punks like us staying in his zone, he's going to end up with a hernia. anyhow, i'm all for a cat. seems like the finishing touch for our little nest.

oh, a scribbling i did while waiting for matt and tiff to finish their Econ lecture today -

someday
i'll search for starbucks in the smoke
and eat my cookies in the sea
i'll dance in fishbowls and shoot stars in my veins; and then
i'll find you on the other side of glass
blowing bubbles as big as me;
and then i will
wake from my melted castle (for i was greedy and swallowed it whole) -
still drugged on coffee
still floating on pain

reflections will not take place tonight,
but shouts to singapore, of course, are fundamental.

juan - your email made me smile! will mail you back soon as i can muster enough time to give you a decent length reply
may, sab, jiezhen - i know, i know, co-lab webpage. may, have fun in france, don't drive the boys/girls too crazy!
lis, nat - love, in the usual dosage (over-dosage). xoxo
kris - you were in my dream last night! and for a flash moment in lecture today, i suspect.

to everyone else, xxx

squeezing this in before my 11:30
IT'S MY FIRST LECTURE interpretation and arg. i'm ecstatic, my advisor Kim managed to magically squeeze me into Marcellino's class last minute, what a miracle-worker. i'm so incredibly excited. apparently her courses are amazing so long as you speak up in recitations. i've got a little buzz going here. it's like, any moment..KABABOOM. perhaps in Marcellino's hall. maybe that way she'll notice me.

t-minus 20 minutes and counting! i'm going to loiter around outside the hall early. EAGER BEAVER mmkay bye you guys have a good one

everything in my new house creaks.
the porch floorboards, the screen door, the steps - even when i tiptoe up the side that's nearer the wall, apparently that's how thieves do it.
note: my roommate sleeps religiously before twelve every night.
so, the guilt of coming back at two thirty AM still exists, even when i'm away from home. funny how i thought i'd escaped that.

i just got back and took a shower. am too afraid to use the hairdryer (see above reason), so i'm sitting in the living room with the window open waiting for my hair to dry. i'm eating freshly-baked brownies (courtesy of lovely girl Timmi next door) and watching Gorillas in the Mist and, frankly, this moment is happiness.

on matters of music, all day i've been listening to Mando Diao's Ode to Ochrasy and Suede's Dog Man Star in rotation. it's fabulously lush and stirring. just thought i'd share - it would be too selfish not to.

since i've gotten here, i think i've truly made a good start to reforming from a slacker to a..er, well, not-a-slacker. i've been coming back to my room around 3AM but surprisingly i haul myself up by eight. this morning i helped tiffany unpack and hoover her apartment. and get this, i bleached her toilet/bathtub. i kid you not. following which we stocked up on instant ramen at a doubtful looking hole-in-the-wall asian grocer. and then we went to convocation. it left quite an impact. bagpipes, kilts, bizarre and surprisingly entertaining speeches, over-and-under-dressed hoardes of students - all that good stuff. following which was a long chain of events that made up my night that i'm too tired to describe. sufficient to know that they tired me out enough not to want to describe them. oh, shut up.

it's so true what they say about the silence before the storm. it's almost eerily still and quiet before all hell breaks loose. and, once you're in the eye of the storm, there's no holding back and no going back.


on another note,
it still bewilders, befuddles and bothers me that labels are used to categorize people into easily digestible shadows of real, breathing, fallible entities with the capacity to slip'n'slide, surprise and shock.

recent events on campus sort of re-ignited my indignant thoughts on the topic. activism is huge on this campus, but sadly there's still those who don't respect the sovereignity of activists - their actions, and the reasons behind them, both. just watching as an outsider, i was both impressed and appalled. i thought long and hard about what i'd say if i were the one defending my actions (that really shouldn't have to be defended in the first place)

"don't you label me. you know who you are. you can't accept why i did what i did and the only way for you to salvage your ego was to slot me into some trite category easily intelligible to your short-sighted mind."

too harsh? i think i'm too emotional for effective impactful activism. or perhaps i'm just right.

When she dies, she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of God and Country for no biblical hell could ever be worse than a state of perpetual inconsequence.
-Beatrice Venier

i think i should get back to my movie. damn these brownies are goo-oood.

so, monday and tuesday have left, and left me with a slightly concussed wednesday. went night jogging last night around Schenley Park after the day's exhaustion to escape the noise of frat parties. that's the only down side of living where i do, smack in the middle of Greek Quad i.e. sandwiched by frat and sorority dorms on all four sides. anyhow, the jog turned out to be the smartest decision of the day, though rather suicidal, considering our orientation schedule. had an extremely Nice New Friend winny for company and a long-legged fitness freak french/irish/american boy Matt (confused about his nationality) to make sure we didn't slack off. 'tis the beginning of healthy college living. (kick me)

updates are in order. since there's a backlog of quite a few days i won't bore you with the long version. basically i'm quite gleeful at the happy mistake that put me into a charming little dorm house called Roselawn Terrace on the cosiest strip of campus, instead of in one of the huge cramped mass Freshman Hell Dorms that first-years are supposed to get dumped in. have four charming housemates - they're all in CFA (College of Fine Arts); there's a voice major, a directing major, an art&design major, and an architecture major. talk about living in Bohemia. all aesthetic aspects of the house are taken care of, i just kick back and watch them beautify.

speaking about beautifying, the one thing i'm sore about is having to leave three quarters of my things back home in my room. damned baggage limit. the rest of the girls drove up, meaning carloads of rugs, mugs, wall photos, posters, lamps - the whole works. i, on the other hand, am stuck re-building my nest in annoying baby steps. the first Essential Installation was a clip-photo stand; it's got quite a pleasing effect. when the wind blows the polaroids bounce up and down in a rather goofy comical fashion. kris, may, sab, you're bobbing in sight right this second, haha. next? i'm thinking a fat throw cushion for the little square of floor beside my window. add some strange-shaped wall hooks, a dinky lamp with the base in the shape of a geisha i spotted yesterday in UO Home, a couple of scarves to cover the shelves, and it's a party.

anyhow, orientation week here redefines the word hectic. if they were trying to achieve Maximum Over-Excitement/Exhaustion, they got it. particularly bizarre was Playfair - picture fifteen hundred freshmen, one gymnasium, and several bizarre tasks that are designed to make you meet "as many new people in as short a time as possible". think along the lines of hunting for the hundred odd other people who have the same birthday month as you, and then the one or two who have the same birthdate, and then planning a joint birthday party. that's right, with a complete total stranger you met in a sweaty gym under the instruction of The Loud Disembodied Voice from the Indoor Speaker System. like i said, el bizarro. but strangeness aside, it's an amazing atmosphere. best of all, i feel ambition oozing from my pores/ears. no joke. coming from the top ten on the under-achiever chart in The-JC-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, that's really saying something. it's something about that old, hushed air of knowledge and century-old lessons that blew out the Humanities & Social Sciences hallway when i hauled open the door; that gave me the shivers. the good sort, the sort that tells you you're on the brink of hard work and good, good things to come.

i acquired a Barnes and Noble card yesterday. best buy yet (besides the mini-microwave, that really takes the cake) it was on the side, on my mission to buy the all-important universal adaptor. FYI, girlfriend, i found it at Radioshack - and bought two, for good measure. the macbook's back in business! so anyhow, there's two new Murakami books on my puny shelf. i'm going to make an effort to ration.

am heading down the street to Woodlawn in five mins to help tiffany unpack. met her looking panicked on the sidewalk outside her dorm, with multiple suitcases, last evening. she's from hongkong/colorado and sounded over the phone about as lost as i felt a mere week ago, so i'm hoping some instant noodles from my stash will make her feel a small bit better.

here's sending all my love, xoxo all round
my pitt cell is 412-623-9689, use not only in emergency, please, folks
and love, i found you an awesome CMU souvenir in the bookshop yesterday, it was tres embarassing carrying it to the counter and paying for it, but the embarassment you'll suffer when you wear it is probably worth mine. haha, scared yet?

xxx

moved, yet again!
different continent, different address. makes me feel less like i'm in a foreign country, when i can't see all i've written when i was at home. least this way, it feels like a travel journal of sorts - and just a prolonged holiday, of sorts. (hoho, can you smell the denial?)

let's take stock. it's 5:56 AM here, i'm in the hotel room looking at times square out my window. am wildly thirsty, dying for a smoke, and racing to type this before my laptop battery runs flat because i didn't pack a bloody adaptor for my Macbook charger and my dad's is in the next room. damn you, America, and your two pin plugs. other than the pitiful internet connection, New York's great so far. no surprises there. i've missed this city - it hasn't changed a bit, still has cranky korean grocers that mutter at you if you stand in the frozen food section contemplating a second too long, and hot dog stands on everycorner that sell pretzels as big as your face. (a lot of my NY memories are linked to food, don't ask why) within 48 hours of getting in, i've had my kindergarten-favourite John's Pizza, behaved like a person sadly lacking in childhood in the soft toy section at FAO Schwartz, smoked in the playgrounds that i used to eat popsicles in (now, that was a strange experience. talk about degeneration with age) and watched Les Miserables on Broadway. Les Mis was so good i can't quite describe it. i was stark upright in my seat for all of three hours, despite the jetlag exhaustion. imagine seeing Lea Salonga play Fantine in the flesh - yeah, i was lost for words, too. later today college shopping is on the schedule - i need adaptors of all sorts. otherwise i'll go mad when my laptop/phone/hairdryer/iPod all start failing at one go. clothes, too; my dad twistedly convinced me that one medium suitcase = grossly overpacked, when the fact is everyone else is hauling their whole wardrobe, complete with room ornaments i.e. wall clocks mini toasters and potted plants. my to-be roommate just mailed me on facebook to ask whether i mind her bringing her stereo system and (i kid you not) potted herb collection. you get my point. i'm just trying not to think of all the things i left behind in my room. grr, somebody shoot me.

still not quite ready to elaborate on the How Shu Feels About Being Away From Home bit. er..damnit.
to say it like it is, i guess it's called pining. there's moments i actually feel like this whole college thing will be great, that my roommates might actually be as cool as they sound over email, that i actually might enjoy myself and like it just the tiniest bit - and then the next, i think of not being able to look into a certain pair of eyes and it sort of negates all past optimism. haha, i know, this is bipolar disorder in its early stages. but keeping things light and looking upwards, like we said we would, i know it's just a matter of time before i learn to have both co-exist; it's possible to pine, and to really live, at the same time. to heck with tried and tested formulas, and for 'Sure-Fail Situations' - no one really knows what we can make work, except us. and with a couple of good friends here and there ready-armed with ''it'll be okay''s once in awhile, we're all set to go.

i think i did a pretty good job on the Bright Side, eh.
let me say now, though, last night, and the night before, and the entire 18 hours on the plane - that was tough.
hearing your voice cracking over Skype - that was tough
sitting here now in your sweater that you over-zealously poured too much perfume on - this is tough.
being yours - that, that part is easy.

The sun got stuck, as it's making its way back down,
We find ourselves, in a familiar part of town

i'm standing in a pool of strange half-light and the other half is in your eyes

And all that I've seen means nothing to me without you

So when I see you next we'll make the most of it,
Tell the sun to start moving again,
The taste of your kiss I still got on my lips,
And I'll take you there with me

It's you and me, connected to a satellite